What Works Better than an Auto-DM.
Why is Sad Robot sad? Because so many Twitter users — who might otherwise be perfectly lovely people — continue to undermine themselves by sending automatic direct messages.
This post aims to show those folks a better way to go.
The core issue: some Twitterites use software that allows them to automatically send direct messages (DMs) to their followers — especially to welcome new followers. They do this even though most Twitter users, in my experience, don’t find it necessary to send DMs to new followers at all, much less via robotic methods, and even though sending an auto-DM is, for many recipients, substantially worse than sending no message at all.
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with sending a DM per se. In fact, DMs are a key feature of Twitter, because they allow you to have personal, one-to-one conversations with people you follow on Twitter.
I stress personal and one-to-one because that’s what DMs are designed to be, and that’s how a large chunk of the Twitter population likes them to be.
It can be a treat to receive a DM like that from someone you’ve been following. It lets you discuss personal aspects of things you’ve been talking about publicly. It lets you exchange e-mail or phone information, or set up face-to-face meetings, so you can deepen an acquaintance you’ve started on Twitter. It’s the perfect place for catty jokes and sarcastic asides.
In short, trading DMs, at its best, is like passing notes in class.
And then along comes someone I just followed . . .
– someone who doesn’t know me from Adam
– someone with whom I may have very little in common
– someone I may have followed only on a lark.
And they use the personal, one-to-one DM channel to pass me — a business card.
A photocopied takeout menu.
A mimeographed flyer for their widget-grooming service.
A ill-edited brochure for a timeshare.
You get the idea.
Now, you wouldn’t send me a come-on for your service . . .
- “Hey, check out my blog at http://www.idontcare.com”
- “Thanks for following! Please enter my contest at http://www.mindlessnonsense.com”
- “Glad to have you along. Let’s hook up on Facebook and LinkedIn and MySpace and Whatchamacallit!”
. . . if you thought it would undermine your reputation with me — would you? Yet that’s exactly what you’re doing when you send me a robo-message like these.
(It’s even more embarrassing when your robo-DM’ing software accidentally sends me, say, eight verbatim copies of the same message. This has happened to me more than once.)
And hey, maybe some people don’t mind the auto-DMs. Good for them. But is it worth it to alienate those who do?
What if one of the people you alienate has 4,200 followers and is getting increasingly impatient — and publicly vocal — about those who ignore the “DO NOT AUTO DM me” message in his Twitter bio? Is it worth it then?
I say no, and I’m here to show you a better way.
Read on . . .
What to do instead — a step-by-step list.
1. Once a day, preferably at a set time so you can enjoy the benefits of batch processing, go through all of the e-mails Twitter has sent informing you of new followers. (Bonus tip: set up a filter in your mail system so that all of these notifications go into one folder automatically. Saves a ton of time.)
2. Using a tabbed browser, click the link in each e-mail to open up a separate tab showing the Twitter profile for that new follower. (Delete or archive the e-mails to get them out of your way.)
3. Go to the first tab and look at the page for that user. Make a decision about whether you’re going to follow back. How to make that decision is a subject for another time, but it will likely involve reading their bio, scanning some of their recent tweets, and maybe clicking on the URL they’ve provided.
4. If you feel you MUST send the person a welcoming DM — and please remember that it isn’t standard procedure and isn’t expected — click on the “Message” link right there on the Twitter profile AND THEN SAY SOMETHING THAT’S TAILORED TO THEM INDIVIDUALLY.
Good examples:
- “Hiya, David – thanks for following. I’m sure I’ll learn plenty about IT security from following you.”
- “Sharon, thanks for following. Your blog looks great! I’ll have to show it to my wife; she’s the real cook in our family.”
- “Thanks for the follow, Jim — and I have to say, I’ve been reading your stuff for ages. Looking forward to talking with you on Twitter.”
If you want, keep a text document with some boilerplate phrases handy. But honestly, if all you can muster in your first DM is boilerplate with the person’s name inserted, you’re probably better off just sending nothing.
5. Optional bonus step: If you’re followed by one of your heroes or close friends, tweet something publicly about following that person, like this: “Wow! @communicatrix has joined the Twitter scene. Good times ahead!”
6. Close the browser tab for that Twitter profile.
7. Repeat steps 3 – 6 until you’re done.
Simple, eh?
Why is this better?
- Your DM says the follower’s NAME. To quote Dale Carnegie, “Remember that a [person]’s Name is to [them] the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
- The DM builds a sense of SHARED INTEREST. Its recipient isn’t thinking “Who is this clown?” but “Hey, he’s interested in network security, too!”
- Because enough Twitterites do keep sending auto-DMs, your personalized message will stand out because of its TAILORING. Just as a tailored suit flatters its wearer, a tailored message flatters its recipient.
Wouldn’t you rather stand out for good reasons?
By this point, this shouldn’t be an issue.
Chris Brogan already explained why you’re hurting yourself with “robot behavior.” He said it well, he said it for a big audience, and he said it two months ago:
Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior
Amber Naslund said it even more eloquently, she said it at length, and she said it three months ago, which is like three years in Twitter time:
Thanks For Following, Now Click On My Junk
It’s not that Chris and Amber think that they can make up rules for you to follow. But they DO get how the social media work, they have legions of passionate Twitter fans, and they’re trying to keep you from embarrassing yourself — just like I am with this post.
The crux of it all: we just met.
- I can find your site easily through your Twitter biography.
- I am not going to watch your welcome video.
- I don’t want a free e-book in return for following you.
As we get to know each other better I may well read your stuff, buy your stuff, praise your stuff to the high heavens.
But that’s as we get to know each other — not right off the bat. Give it time.
The floor is now open for your comments.
~
[Special thanks to Elizabeth Hannan, Jenn Van Grove, and April of Sweet Leaf Tea for their feedback while I was writing this post.]
~
Robot imImage by Steve Keys, sandwich board by Michael Coghlan; both used under a Creative Commens license.
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38 Comments so far
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I’m glad that I haven’t run into this Auto-DM thing. This really puts into words what you were explaining yesterday at lunch though.
Hopefully people will read this and follow.
The sad part about spending the time to write this longish post is that the culprits, the Auto-DM’ers aren’t reading this at all. Now if they could send a robot to read it for them…
BRILLIANTLY stated my friend!
I just recently experienced this phenom when I asked some business friends, if I was to follow everyone that follows our company. Based on the fact that it’s a company and not my personal Twitter acct, it’s better to follow back unless it’s obvious that it’s spam.
I went through my list of followers and followed EVERYONE and all of a sudden I have 80000000 auto DM’s that for the most part didn’t make sense to me. Just wanted to sell me something. I did get a few that had actual messages to SLT in them, which I really appreciated.
Social networking is one hell of an experiment and we are all learning together. Let’s remember to be respectful of each other. No one likes spam!
Thanks for a well-written explanation!
April
Good point, David — which is why I’m now mulling how to spread the word about this more widely.
For starters, I’m wondering whether I should send a (personalized) DM to the various folks who have sent me a robo-DM lately. You think it would help?
April — I’ve gone through something similar lately (following a lot more folks who follow the @hoovers Twitter account), which led to a similar flood of auto-DMs.
Ugh.
The thing is, when you talk about social networking sites in a lump, I’d prefer to receive a twitter automatic direct message any day over receiving group messages in my Facebook inbox.
I don’t join Facebook groups to receive the equivalent of not-applicable-to-me messages. But I don’t have a choice if I want to be a group member. Much more annoying than the twitter messages.
I’m curious if you think running a grouptweet is grounds for DM’ing new followers with a boilerplate message. The problem I’ve run into is that new followers of a grouptweet sometimes don’t realize that it’s a grouptweet, and then they DM the account with a message only to have it pop up in the grouptweet account’s twitter stream. It seems to me that it’s better to DM new followers with a quick message that explains, “hey, this is a grouptweet – send a DM to tweet directly into the stream for all followers to see!” That way, no one sends a DM meant for private reading only to see it appear publicly. Otherwise, I agree that auto-DMs are generally no fun.
I hear you, Ari — but consider this: Facebook groups inflict their inbox damage structurally and indiscriminately. I wish they didn’t, and I hope Facebook enables some sort of controls to help the problem, but at least we know the problem lives in the infrastructure.
But an individual choosing to auto-DM . . . that’s NOT structural. It’s that person’s bad decision. And therefore much easier to remedy.
It’s an interesting question, Wes. I don’t use grouptweets, so I can’t comment from my own experience . . . BUT the type of message you describe would seem to fit into the same category as the automated messages that listservs have been sending out forever: “You are now subscribed to the ListX listserv. Be sure to save this message for future reference . . .”
Those sorts of messages ARE very useful because they tell me something I DO need to know about using the technology — not something that someone HOPES I’ll want to know — or at least not reject outright — about their product / blog / e-book / podcast / whatever. In other words, they lose that spam flavor by virtue of their direct usefulness. So I say go for it.
I guess fortunately this has not happened too often to me. I think I got one of those auto DMs recently, but they did it so well that I couldn’t really tell.
I, too, think it’s a bit cheesy to do an auto DM without knowing who it is you are sending it to…you could be sending it to a spammy follower!
Personally, I wish that when twitter sent those emails they would include a mini-bio because I don’t have time to click on those links to check out bios of people with unusual twitter names. I usually only click if I recognize the person’s name.
Yes Tim Walker, i agree with you about being personal and thanks for this post. Sending personal Tweet takes a lot of time. If you feel that it’s not worth investing then there is no point in joining any social network.
This post goes a long way toward explaining in a nice way why “Welcome New Follower” DMs are so annoying and how to approach it. I agree with much of what you said except for the fact that I would not make the distinction between auto DMs and personalized DMs. I have always hated DMs from new followers, and up until recently, had no idea many of them were automated. No matter how personal they are, I find them intrusive, desperate and grasping. I automatically unfollow anyone that sends me a welcome DM.
Your advice about how and why you should personalize them is great, I would just add a recommendation against sending them at all until you actually have engaged the person in conversation. Start with a few @s – like waving across the hall during recess to use your high school dating analogy – then pass the note.
Ravi — PRECISELY right. It’s not about quantity, but quality. If someone wants to send me a note, fine . . . but they should take the time to send ME a note.
Well said, Cathleen. I have sent a few welcoming DMs right off the bat in cases where I recognized the person or knew them from another context, like this: “Thanks for following, Jane. You might not recall this, but you and I spoke briefly after your SXSW talk last year. Glad to be back in touch.”
But yes, @’s are always better for warming things up with someone you’ve never met. Just enter the flow of the cocktail-party conversation before you start whispering in my ear. :)
I disagree. It’s polite to say thank you for following and beginning a virtual relationship. You sound very cranky about all this.
Hank — You’re free to disagree all you like. But how is it “polite” to have an automatic tool generate a non-specific, non-personalized note to me — especially one containing a link advertising the person’s stuff?
An analogy: after a wedding, it IS polite for the newlyweds to send out handwritten thank-you notes for all of the gifts they’ve received. It would NOT be seen as polite for them to send out pre-printed cards that said “Dear Friend — We are grateful for the wedding gift you gave us. We appreciate your thoughtfulness.” It would be seen as . . . what? crass? mechanistic? meaningless? lazy? What would YOU call it?
Tim, For most auto DMs I see, the note would also indicate where guests could go to look at the gift registry online in case we missed it before.
I know of some really busy people who use the auto DM in a sincere way, but they too could easily do without it and probably would if they knew it clutters up our inboxes. Thanks for the post. Mike
So true thanks for this post Tim! I can point anyone that annoys me to it.
If I follow you and you autoDM me chances are – I will immediately UNfollow you!
and don’t even get me start w MrTweet and MsTweet that spams people FOR me ARGHGHGHGH They are both now BANNED.
Great emily post Tim! Auto DMs for me are auto “I have no interest in you, only me.” It takes the social out of SM and leaves one thing, “media,” as in, let me broadcast. Personally, you send me an auto DM and you are “toast.”
Tim,
As always, you are right on the money! Two weeks ago I had a recruiter speak ill of my Twitter follow/following ratio. My numbers were not 1:1. I take the time to view the profile of those following me before I follow them. Do they have a site? Bio on profile? What is the content of their last 20 tweets? I consider all of this before I dilute my Twitter stream and follow. When I get an auto DM…I go back and unfollow as quickly as I followed. I took the time to evaluate you and you insult me with an instapitch?! I don’t think so. You may have a brilliant mind, but I don’t have time for second evals on Twitter. So, I may not have 1:1 ratio, but the value on my stream is much better because of the imbalance.
A recruiter seriously brought up a twitter ratio? That’s amazing. I’m not sure I’d put much stock in that recruiter. I keep a fairly even ratio, and it grows naturally. (I never mass follow) But that is all personal. This is all personal. Social media use is personal. Shame on that recruiter.
BRAVO!
If you’ve been watching my Tweets you know that I strongly agree with you.
Twitter is like a party. We know some of the people and easily interact. A follow is really just an introduction. It’s a “Hi!”
Who in their right mind sends a thank you follow up to someone who only said “Hi”?
No less sends a free gift, tries to drag me into their office or store?
Thanks for this post.
Judy Rey Wasserman
On Twitter: @judyrey
Lauren & Mike — Sounds like the recruiter suffers from a superficial, numbers-game approach to Twitter.
Some people *want* to have more followers than followed, e.g. because it shows that they’re interesting enough to sustain followers who aren’t just following them to be “polite.”
Some people *want* more followeds than followers as a statement of the diversity of voices they’re trying to cultivate in their personal Twitter community.
Who’s right? All of the above.
I love this post! You are eloquent and clear without being condescending or self-righteous. I am a huge twitter advocate for the mom entrepreneurs I support, and I am always scouting for good posts to share with them to teach good twitter citizenry. This will be one of them!
Lara Galloway
The Mom Biz Coach
http://www.mombizcoach.com
Thanks, Lara. I think it’s easy to say “Thou shalt not . . .” and harder to say “This is why A works better than B.” I’m trying to do the latter — and I’m glad you find this post helpful. Cheers!
In response to Tim, responding himself to Lauren and Mike:
Some people *want* to have more followers than followed, e.g. because it shows that they’re interesting enough to sustain followers who aren’t just following them to be “polite.”
Some people *want* more followeds than followers as a statement of the diversity of voices they’re trying to cultivate in their personal Twitter community.
*****
I used to be in both camps, but now I’m in neither. I prefer being myself, following who I choose to follow and being followed by those who choose to follow me. That said, I flip-flop but am satisfied with my current ratio, adding about 2-3 people daily and unfollowing as necessary.
I’m with you, Ari. I make individual decisions based on each Twitterite I come across. If they seem interesting, I follow; if not, not. And I reserve the right to change my mind at any point, in either direction. I expect others to handle me the same way.
Thanks for following me. Check out my useless blog!
There is only way way to receive a flood of auto-DMs: Follow a bunch of people indiscriminately.
I have no problem with following lots of people. However you want to user Twitter is up to you. But if you’re following people to try to get known (such as, like the Hoover’s account, when you’re following +2K people and have fewer followers than friends), then don’t whine about getting a welcoming message.
As for the party analogy, it really depends upon what kind of party you’re at. At business networking functions it’s perfunctory to hand someone your business card as you greet them. Maybe that’s not the party you’re looking for, but remember, you came to my party. You followed me.
Thanks for the comment, Don. A few points:
1. Did I say anything about “a flood of auto-DMs”? My whole post is about the 1-on-1 nature of a Twitter DM. I can affirm that I *haven’t* received a flood of them. It’s just that many of the ones I *do* receive are grating, and I hate to see people undercut themselves like that.
2. We don’t follow people indiscriminately. We decline to follow back plenty of people who follow us. And yeah, we did follow a lot of people early on as we were getting the hang of Twitter, such that last summer we had something like 40% as many following us as we were following. Now that ratio is above 90%, and still rising.
3. Whining? Really? I wrote the post to suggest another — better — way of going about things. If we disagree about my tone, so be it, but I’m not a whiner by nature and I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of what I was doing here.
4. There’s plenty of disagreement about what kind of coctail party Twitter should be, and I’m fine with a broad diversity of opinions about it. But for people who are trying to put the best foot forward, it’s better to undersell than oversell, just as it’s better to keep your business cards in your pocket before you’re *sure* the event you’re attending is a networking mixer. In this vein, it’s worth pointing out again that *most* Twitterites I’ve encountered *don’t* feel the need to lead with the business card.
5. Not that anyone’s on trial here, but as an observation: you followed us first, at least judging by the notice that Twitter sent us on February 20. It just took me a bit to catch up and follow you back.
Listen, I don’t think I’m laying down the law for anybody. But I know I *am* expressing a frustration shared by many users of Twitter who dislike auto-DMs.
Over to you.
@Tim – I’m not criticizing you or saying that you’re whining, but a lot of prominent bloggers on this subject certainly have been whining about getting a flood of DMs. Which is funny, because there’s only one way to get a flood.
Let’s just summarize the interaction we had. We’re at a business networking party (you’re a business account, I’m a business account, which anyone can see by looking at our profiles). I said “Hi” on Feb 20. I say “Hi” to a lot of people because I’m on Twitter to network. You came back and said “Hi”, so I handed you my business card. I’m not sure I see what the problem is. If you don’t want to be at the same party I’m at, then don’t follow me and we both move on.
While many people may be offended by auto-DMs, many are not. We’ve seen our feedburner stats almost double since adding an auto DM that let’s people know how to subscribe. We’ve also seen a bump in sales. There’s a steady diet of useful information in our tweets, so following us is worth it to 11K+ people right now. And for the people that are super offended, I’m guessing they’re not in our target market anyway.
Now you must admit that it’s just a little bit funny to read an article about not auto-DMing from Hoovers. I’d rather receive an auto-DM than a telemarketing call by a factor of about 1,000.
Fair points, Don — and if your auto-DM is helping to drive your business in this economy, I’m not going to tell you to turn it off. (That said, have we telemarketed to you?)
I would note, though, that there will be lots of asymmetries: your account and mine may both be business-oriented (though yours is tagged with your own name), but your message will go out to anybody, whether they’re business or personal or whatever. If you’re okay with losing some people because of that, so be it. I might draw an analogy to the few people who act offended when they find out that much of our content sits behind a subscription wall . . . and yet we still have to pay the bills.
Maybe the bigger issue we’re running into is the evolution of Twitter into different kinds of channels. Just like some early “purist” bloggers wailed about people getting into blogging for money, there will be those who wail about Twitter being used for commerce — or, rather, used at a commercial scale.
All that said, I still think it’s BETTER to greet people individually. But maybe that’s a matter of taste?
I agree completely that it’s BETTER to greet people individually, but it’s just not cost effective. I wish I could afford to hire someone to sit at the keyboard all day and do that. But marketing is a numbers game. I picked up ~6K followers in February. At 5 minutes each, that’s 500 hours of work to personally research and greet each follower. If I could have found someone to do that for $12/hour the campaign would have cost $6,000. The amount of revenue we brought in for that effort wouldn’t justify it. But the auto-DM didn’t cost anything other than offending some people that probably wouldn’t have bought any products anyway. The fact that people continue to follow our tweets indicates to me that they’re getting good value out of the relationship, so I think everyone wins. But I’m not doing this just because I’m such a nice guy and want to give out free information.
For the people that do the research themselves and build a personalized welcome message, I’d submit that they’re not valuing their time correctly. You may think your own time is free, but there’s an opportunity cost to everything.
What I find interesting is the strong undercurrent among many on this subject that advertising of any sort on Twitter is a bad thing. What is going to happen to Twitter when they finally get a business model that involves putting commercial messages in front of people? Eventually they’ll have to start making money or it’s gong to shut down. Nothing in life is free.
Advertising on Twitter is already rampant – it’s just less direct, asymmetrical in terms of links and keywords, and tends to show up most often as a “twitterfeed” or branded background or profile pic. Now I just need to figure out how to become a “suggested user”, i.e. Twitter’s first implicit foray into commercialism.
Good points, Kelly. In my view, Twitter is going through growing pains much like other media have in the past: first it’s about the utility of the medium, whether we’re talking about printed books or radio or the Web or whatever . . . and then businesspeople — some savvy and some tone-deaf — take hold of it for business purposes. And there’s always resistance to this shift.
[...] What Works Better than an Auto-DM. [...]
[...] before why using automatic direct messages (DMs) on Twitter is often a bad idea. But since I wrote my initial post on the subject, I’ve softened my view. Some people use auto-DMs as a simple way to convey a friendly hello. [...]
This was a great post. I have to say that I don’t use any social media, I am not on Face Book, even though this drives my friends around the bend I just see no use for it, and for Twitter I have seen the site but have yet to register, I can see how popular it is and that now more and more companies, are getting involved with it in order to promote their business.